The Art of Having a Newborn
by perfectpro
Summary: The Coopers are expecting! Come join them to meet their newborn little girl, Lynnette Cooper.


It was an ordinary day in the Cooper household. Well, as far as ordinary could get with Sonny being eight and a half months pregnant with a baby girl and Chad freaking out over every little thing. Currently, Sonny was stretched out on the couch, her head resting against some pillow they had gotten as a wedding gift. (Who even sends pillows as wedding gifts? Nevertheless, it was a very comfy pillow indeed.) Channels were being flipped through as Chad held his cell phone to his ear, fingers ready to dial the hospital to alert them of Sonny's labor if need be. Sonny rolled her eyes and tapped the couch cattycorner to the one she was positioned on. "Chad, just sit down. I'm not about to spontaneously go into -- I think my water just broke!" she cried dramatically as Chad punched numbers into his phone.

"Chad, I was kidding! I'm not about to spontaneously go into labor, believe it or not. I've still got at least two weeks before the due date. We've actually discussed this several times," she said calmly as Chad hung up the phone. "And I thought you said I couldn't act."

Chad looked as his wife as though she was an alien. "Sonny, Sonny, Sonny. I _never_ said that you couldn't act. I simply stated that I was better at it then you were."

Sonny laughed. "Admit it, Cooper. You would have had me in the car, on the way to the hospital, police cars flanking us as we went there, and Tawni on the phone telling me to 'keep breathing even though you want to scream and strangle Chad for doing this to you!' if I had kept that charade up for ten more seconds."

"No way. With the way you are right now, it would have at least taken me thirty seconds to get you into a car," Chad said as he stole the remote and switched off of QVC where they were selling a lavender sweater set with a matching pearl necklace to CNN. Sonny reached futilely for the remote.

"You're evil. You know that I was watching that. I'm pregnant too, so I can't even reach over my fat stomach to steal the remote back! I should call Tawni and tell her that you're using my being pregnant to my discomfort," Sonny said as she scrolled down her contacts list. Chad blinked and turned the channel back to QVC, handing Sonny said remote. He remembered the first time that Sonny had threatened to call Tawni a few months ago and he took it as a joke. Somehow or another, the female blond had cornered him in his own house with a cell phone and a baseball bat, thrown a ball point pen at his head, and threatened to remove him of his ability to have children within fifteen seconds upon arriving. (Upon his pointing out that he was already going to have one child with Sonny being three months pregnant, Tawni removed her previous threat and made it into a violent and much disapproved of by Sonny and Chad action.)

"You can watch whatever you want, sweetie. Just don't make Tawni come over," he begged as Sonny smiled and wrote the number for the sweater down absent mindedly on a sticky note pad. Sonny rolled her eyes and smiled at her husband affectionately.

"You know, we really aren't that functional as a couple."

Chad looked away from his mirrored phone and glanced at Sonny. "Yes we are, Sonny. We're married, aren't we? Plus, you're pregnant. I'd say that we are more than functional as a couple."

Sonny looked in over at her husband in awe that he could look into a mirror for that long (he had even beaten Tawni's record). "I guess so. But I mean, look at how we met. I was in a fat suit! We were on different shows with a huge rivalry, we went out, ended up breaking up, stayed mad at the other for two straight years, and then Katherine came down and made us see sense again. Now we're married, I'm pregnant, and we have a cat. Life works in crazy ways, doesn't it?"

Chad nodded as he held his wife's hand lazily. "Yeah, but it'll calm down in a few months. You won't be pregnant anymore, we'll have a beautiful baby girl to spend all of our money on to spoil her, and we'll be the best parents the world has ever seen since _John and Kate plus Eight_. Doesn't that sound fun?" Sonny sighed and smiled into the distance, but then frowned deeply.

"John and Kate got divorced," Sonny told him with narrowed eyes.

Chad blinked and made his mind go back to realize that Sonny was right. "See? That'll make it so much easier to be better parents then they were!"

Sonny chuckled. "You make it sound so easy. You could write a book on how having a kid is fun, relaxing, and great for the whole family! If you got that book out now or within the next week or two, in nine months the United States would have a baby boom, all thanks to you. They'll have days devoted to Chad Dylan Cooper."

"They already should have days devoted to me; I shouldn't have to write a book. Besides, don't be so dramatic, Sonny."

Sonny raised her eyebrows at her husband. "You're calling me dramatic here, Chad? Let's not forget the times that we've had to cancel restaurant reservations because _someone_ wasn't finished with their hair."

"Just let it go, Sonny! I didn't know that you could use product to imitate hair like mine! But it just isn't the same, because nothing is better than the real thing. Products just make it all flat and starched, not light and windswept," Chad chimed in absently as an orange and white striped kitty jumped onto the couch and head butted him on the shoulder. "Ow, Buttons!" he said and began to rub the cat's head. Sonny smiled at the scene before her.

"Buttons, sweetie, come over here to me. Aw, who's a sweet little angelic kitty? That's right, Buttons, you are. You're sweet and angelic and adorable and I just love you so much," she cooed affectionately. The cat turned away from Chad without a second thought and rubbed against Sonny. Chad scoffed as he stood up and poured himself a cup of coffee.

"..."

"You know what I just realized, Chad?"

"What, Sonny?"

"We're going to have a _daughter_ in less than three weeks," Sonny whispered with a beaming smile on her face. "Can you imagine?"

Chad sighed. "I've been imagining it ever since you told me. Thirteen years from now, I'll have killed at least ten people. Do you think the acting agencies will mind that?" he asked with a smile, causing Sonny to frown at him and smack his arm gently.

"You will _not_ be killing anyone thirteen years from now or anytime soon, decades from now or not! Where on earth did you get _that_ idea?"

Chad laughed at the confused expression his wife wore. "You know what they say, sweetie." Sonny wore a blank expression. She obviously _didn't_ know what they said. Chad sighed. "Guns don't kill people, dads with cute daughters do. With the way you and I look, Sonny, our daughter could be Miss America when she's old enough. But she won't be Miss America. There'd be too much attention from boys."

"Is that really such a bad thing, Chad?"

Chad gasped, purely shocked. "Of course it is, Sonny! She'll have enough attention with how great she looks (I mean, if she's related to the both of us, can you imagine how cute she'll be?); she doesn't need to be in the press too!"

"Chad, I was talking about the attention from boys part. Is attention from boys really all that bad of a thing for a girl?"

"When that girl is my daughter, then yes I do think it's a bad thing! You obviously don't know how teenage boys think, Sonny."

Sonny cocked an eyebrow at him, a trick Chad had taught her when they were going out. Suddenly, he now regretted teaching that move to her. "Did you think that about me?" Chad swallowed a piece of licorice whole as she asked him because depending on her hormones the answer to that question could work out in a way that most certainly did _not_ benefit him.

"Umm... I mean... Not that I _wouldn't_... It's just... What's the answer that won't make me sleep on the couch? I mean, with your pregnant hormones, I can never be absolutely sure," he commented after a moment. Sonny smiled as she jerked forward and reached for her stomach.

"Call Tawni, Chad," she said quickly as she tried to clamor off of the couch and stand on her own two feet. Chad smiled at her simply. He knew what his wife was doing. She was just going to keep this up until he was on the phone with the hospital, telling them to get a room ready for her and a soon-to-be newborn baby. He wasn't falling for it this time. "Chad," Sonny growled threateningly, "get me to the hospital yourself or call Tawni to do it; I'm going into labor. If I'm not in a hospital for this, you'll be the parent with wake-up duty for the first three weeks."

"Sonny, you'll quit the charade the second I pick up the phone. I'm not falling for it and you can't make me," he said childishly, sticking his tongue out at her. Sonny clenched her hands onto the armrest and pulled herself up. She breathed steadily as she reached for the phone.

"Chad, I'm in labor. _Call Tawni to get over here right now!_" she screamed as Chad shook his head, intending for his wife not to get the better of him this time. Suddenly, he was on the ground, his phone was in Sonny's hand, and she was dialing.

He could hear Tawni answer her phone as she said, "Hey, Sonny!"

"Tawni, I'm in labor. Chad doesn't _believe_ me. Come over here and _take me to the hospital right now, Tawni!_ Please, Tawni, get over here!" Sonny cried desperately as Chad stood up and realized that his wife wasn't acting this time.

"Oh my God! Sonny, you're in labor!" Chad shouted as he tried to remember what the instructor of a birthing class they went to said that he was supposed to do whenever Sonny went into labor. "Push, Sonny, push!"

Sonny glared at him as she hung up the phone. "Not now, Chad! Go and call the hospital if you're going to talk! Tawni better hurry up!"

Chad was nervously pacing around the room as he gathered things together. "Well need this... That'd be useful..."

"Chad, honey, I don't need a coffee pot. Put it back. Tawni's car is in the driveway. Go into the bedroom and grab my purse and the baby bag. I'll ride with Tawni; you can take your car, as that's the car with the baby seat in it. Then, get to the hospital so I can scream at you without worrying about making it to the hospital on time. Get to the hospital!" Sonny shouted as Tawni came into the house.

"Get into my car, Sonny. We need to get you to the hospital so that my little niece can meet her Auntie Tawni! Ah, I hope you know that I'm going to spoil your kids rotten. Sit down, Sonny!" Tawni cried as she managed to shove Sonny into her car.

"Chad seems so uncollected and not ready for this -- Tawni, what if we aren't ready to have a kid! Tawni! Oh, God, what if Chad doesn't want a kid and he was lying about it ever since I told him! Oh, God, I'm doomed to have a life with a husband who doesn't love me because I had a kid when he didn't want one and he'll hate me forever, I'm a terrible person because of—!"

"You're the one having the kid here, Sonny, not Chad. You're the main priority right now. Chad isn't helping. By the way, you might want to call the hospital and tell them to open a room for Chad. With the way he's hypervenalating right now, he'll need one of them. Oh, Sonny, stop worrying; I was kidding! You're so ready to have a kid. You've always been the motherly type, you know."

Sonny looked at her ex-costar and felt the need to pull her into as much of a hug as she could give while being extremely pregnant. "Sometimes, Tawni, you really show the world a different side of yourself."

"I'm just special like that, Sonny. You should know that by now. How long have we known each other? I've always been special. I'm Tawni Hart, and I get what I want and I want you and Chad to have the cutest little baby girl for Auntie Tawni to fawn over and spoil rotten."

"Do you really think it'll all turn out fine in the end?"

"Of course I do, silly! He'll be fine, you'll be fine, and soon enough, once you're out of the hospital, you'll have a little buddle of joy to be fine with too!" Tawni cried as she turned into the hospital parking lot. "Now let's get you some drugs! You look like you're in a little bit pain there, Sonny."

Sonny frowned and squinted as the flashes of cameras filled the windows of the car. "Just a bit there, Tawni. Now get me into the hospital!"

Paparazzi flocked to the car as Tawni helped Sonny out and rushed her into the doors. Sonny bit down on her lip and said something about how "these people had better get me drugs or so help me with God as my witness, I will murder every single one of you and laugh as your ashes burn into hell while dancing on your graves!" which is kind of normal for her when she's in extreme pain. Chad's car swung into a parking space and he ran into the hospital, following them.

* * *

"I think you broke my hand, Sonny!" Chad cried helplessly as Sonny's hand once again clenched down on his own.

"I can't believe _you're_ the cause of all this pain! Why can't they give me any drugs here! You're never having kids after this one if I have to go through this much pain again! I hate you so much right now, damn it! Who said that having kids was a good idea?! I'll murder them once I get done here! God, just give me something, anything even, to stop this damn pain!" Sonny screamed as several nurses at the base of the hospital bed didn't even bother to look up. This wasn't anything new to them, after all. Chad paled considerably as Sonny was cutting off all circulation to his hand at the moment.

"Please, give her drugs. Please, anything to make her keep from shattering the bones in my hand. Oh, God, please, give her some drugs!" he cried to the nurses in desperation.

One of them answered without looking away from a conversation she was carrying on with another nurse, "She can't have the drugs, Mr. Cooper. Mrs. Cooper specifically requested two weeks ago that when she went into labor, she did not want any drugs to interfere with the birthing."

"Can you give _me_ some drugs then? I have a shattered hand over here!" he screamed and tried to remove his hand from Sonny's tight grip. "Please, I'll do anything! Make her stop! Oh, God, is that my daughter? Oh, God, she's absolutely — Sonny, stop breaking my hand!"

One of the nurses looked over at him, clearly annoyed. "Mr. Cooper, if you would be so kind as to be quiet, we would most appreciate it." At one more scream from Chad, she decided to revise her wording. "Mr. Cooper, we want you to shut up," she snapped. "Mrs. Cooper, just one more push and you'll have a daughter!"

"Sonny, how are you doing? I went and bought some stuffed animals for your newborn little girl!" Tawni said happily as Sonny reached for a cloth on the table next to her and hurled it at Tawni, landing on Tawni's new purse. Tawni frowned, but didn't say anything besides "Someone's in a little pain, now aren't they?" Chad nodded as Sonny gripped his hand once more.

"Give her some drugs! I don't care if she said for you to not to; I'm telling you that if she doesn't get some drugs then I'm going to — Ouch! Stop breaking my hand, Sonny!" he cried.

"When you're going through labor after almost nine months of throwing up, being fat and not seeing your feet for over three months, you can tell me what to do! Until then, you'll keep your mouth shut until it happens, you asshole!" Sonny screamed murderously. Tawni laughed quietly at the scene before her as the team of nurses looked up, smiling at them all.

"Mr. and Mrs. Cooper, we are pleased to present you with your baby girl. We'll leave you with the birth certificate to fill out once we've weighed her. Mrs. Cooper, would you like to hold your daughter?" Sonny smiled widely as she stretched out her arms in anticipation.

"Hey, little girl," she whispered in awe. "You're Lynnette Cooper. Your daddy gets to give you your middle name, but I got dibs on your first name. How's that, Lynn?" she asked with her voice caught in her throat. "Chad?" she asked tentatively.

"Yeah, Sonny?" he asked while his gaze was completely and totally absorbed by his newborn daughter, who was sniffling quietly as her parents looked down at her in adoration.

"We're _parents_. We have a _daughter_. Can you believe this? It seems like yesterday it was the peace picnic I held for _So Random!_ and _Mackenzie Falls_," Sonny said nostalgically as Tawni walked over to the happy couple to see their little girl.

"So, Chad, if your doing the middle part of her name, what's it gonna be?" Tawni asked brightly. Chad smiled at the question.

"Well, I liked a lot of names. So, in the end, I just decided to hyphenate all of them together into twelve separate middle names. You wanna hear it?" he asked, obviously excited.

* * *

Three Weeks Later:

A baby's shrilling cry filled the confinement of the Cooper household as Sonny shook Chad awake. "It's your turn to rock her to sleep," she mumbled as Chad tried to block out the noise with a pillow covering his face while rocking in the fetal position.

"You got special treatment for nine months because of this thing. It's time that I get some special treatment around here too," he snapped lazily and rolled over. Sonny rolled her eyes.

"If you call throwing up every morning, afternoon, and night special treatment, then I guess I did get special treatment. Go rock her back to sleep," she said sleepily and tried to shove him out of the bed. Chad groaned and unwillingly got up and walked down the hall to his wailing daughter's room. Lynnette Jennifer-Emilia Charlotte-Marie Danielle-Mackenzie Lynor-Kathleen Adriane-Amber Madeline-Denise Alexis-Amanda Taylor-Anne Meagan-Victoria Aries-Carolina Samantha-Marilyn Adrian-Olivia Cooper was waving her little fists into the air as her father approached the crib. He picked her up and walked to the kitchen. It was six forty five in the morning, and at this point, he probably wasn't going to get much more sleep.

"You've caused me a lot of sleep loss, you know that, Lynnette?" he asked his daughter and sat down her down in her high chair. She slammed her hands down and screamed in response. Chad rolled his eyes and poured some Cheerios onto the table. Lynnette pounded her hands again and several Cheerios landed on Chad's face. He frowned and wiped them away. This process was repeated several times as the morning went on before Sonny woke up and wandered into the kitchen.

"Chad, why is our daughter throwing Cheerios at you?" she asked patiently as she poured two cups of coffee, one for her, and one for her husband with Cheerios in his face.

'Lynnette hasn't learned that throwing Cheerios at people is bad manners," Chad explained as he wiped the cereal off of his face and put more Cheerio's onto Lynnette's high chair, where they were promptly thrown into his face.

Sonny looked at her husband for a long minute before she lifted her daughter out of the high chair she had been sitting in and carried her out of the room, with Chad trailing behind them.

"Why are you taking Lynnette out of her high chair, Sonny? She's learning not to throw food."

"Lynnette, Chad, really? She's just a baby. Lynnette isn't a baby name; it's a grown up name. _Lynn_ is a name for a child as they grow up! Isn't that right, Lynn?" Sonny asked the now-sleeping baby in her arms. "Besides, from the part of the lesson that I saw, she wasn't learning that well."

Chad tried to take his daughter to return her to her high chair. "She'll be a grown up one day, and she'll be happy that I've always treated her like one. That doesn't tell me why you took her out of her high chair! I was teaching her etiquette; she would have already learned if you hadn't interfered," he said as Sonny shook her head slowly at him, as though talking to a child who didn't understand.

"I'm trying to protect our daughter from the catching disease of stupidity," Sonny whisper-yelled at Chad as he, clearly shocked, took a step back from her.

"Excuse me?" he asked, offended. Surely Sonny couldn't mean that _he_ was stupid.

"Chad, she is three weeks old! She can't have Cheerios. "It's pretty obvious. We've gone over this several times before with the pretzels, and the grapes, and the oatmeal, and the toast, and the _hot tea_ that you got burned with," Sonny stated and returned her daughter to bed, leaving a rightfully ashamed looking Chad behind in the living room. When she returned, she rolled her eyes at Chad before sitting down beside the cat on the couch. "I still cannot believe that you gave our daughter twelve hyphenated middle names! No one has that many middle names. What happens when she needs to write her middle name, or her middle initial?"

"You were the one who wanted Marie as a middle name. If it wasn't for you, she would have only had _eleven _hyphenated middle names and one regular one. Honestly, Sonny, you would have screwed up the entire birth certificate if I hadn't been there."

Sonny scoffed and rolled her eyes, scooping an US Weekly Magazine from the end table. "Do you see this, Chad? They think that I didn't even give you a choice in our daughter's name. They think _I'm_ the one who decided to name our daughter Lynnette Jennifer-Emilia Charlotte-Marie Danielle-Mackenzie Lynor-Kathleen Adriane-Amber Madeline-Denise Alexis-Amanda Taylor-Anne Meagan-Victoria Aries-Carolina Samantha-Marilyn Adrian-Olivia Cooper! I gave her the Jennifer and the Marie. You're responsible for all of the rest. So when she comes crying to you during her moody/PMS-y adolescence years and wants some answers about her name, you're the one at fault here. Just making sure you know," she said carefully, turning a page. Chad paled considerably.

"I shouldn't have insisted on Mackenzie. I mean, if we had kept the rest but eliminated the Mackenzie and the Marie, she would have only had eleven hyphenated middle names. We could even have gotten rid of the Victoria and the Danielle part too! When did I become so stupid to have to have a teenage girl whine to me about a problem I caused? I'm an idiot."

Sonny didn't say anything, but he could tell that she agreed with him. Whatever, it wasn't her problem. "Have fun thirteen years from now!" she chattered with a wink that made him roll his eyes.

"Joy. Thirteen years from now, I'll be in my _late thirties_ - the horror of it all, and as if that isn't bad enough by itself, I'll have a teenage daughter complaining all of about her unique and individual and never before felt pain of her name and about how it made everything go wrong in her life to me, and I'll be in jail! Doesn't my future look bright?" he asked sarcastically as he sat down next to Sonny and wrapped his arms around her.

"You won't be in jail, Chad."

"Have you seen our daughter, Sonny? Only three weeks old and absolutely gorgeous. She'll become a heart breaker by the time she turns two. All those boys in the sandbox will cry when she goes over to the swing set and leaves them all behind to miss her! But of course, since they'll only be one or two or three years old, I won't need to shoot them."

"Oh, can it, Chad," Sonny said as she lightly slapped Chad's arm fondly.

"You know you love it, Sonny. You married me, didn't you?"

Sony shook her head simply as she rested her head upon Chad's shoulder. "I'm still not sure _why_," she commented.

"Ah, well, you love me."

"And you love me," Sonny said simply as dozed off due to many hours and days and seeming weeks of lost sleep due to a brand new addition to the household.

"You have absolutely no idea whatsoever," Chad whispered softly into her hair.


End file.
